


This Old Prison

by earlwyn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon-Typical Violence, Commander Cody Week (Star Wars), Dehumanization, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars), Vader is His Own Warning, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 17:22:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlwyn/pseuds/earlwyn
Summary: After the unsatisfying and sudden death of Obi-Wan aboard the Death Star, Darth Vader decides to retrieve his old master from the last time period his whereabouts were predictable — the Clone Wars — and to bring him to the future so as to allow Vader his rightful and full revenge. (No more bodily disappearing into the Force, Obi-Wan; that'scheating!) It just so happens he has the perfect soldier at hand for the job.Clone 2224 wakes up 22 years in the past on Coruscant.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Darth Vader, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 18
Kudos: 86





	This Old Prison

**Author's Note:**

> baby's first star wars fic, aw. there is a 60% chance I will continue this. thanks to [PaxDuane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane) and [elouanwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elouanwrites/pseuds/elouanwrites) for the handholding and pre-reading while i panicked.
> 
> Rated M to be safe. Anakin in his murderbot suit isn't super nice about things.
> 
> For [Commander Cody Week 2021](https://commandercodyweek.tumblr.com/) Day 6 prompt(s): au; time travel. Also maybe a twisted version of the prompt: Purge Trooper!Cody.

2224 woke on paved ground with grit in his mouth, his outstretched hand at once both numb and aflame. 

His shoulder ached. His ribs. Skull. A distant, rolling headache. Something inside his chest felt abraded. Busted and bruised open. Not an organ. His heart pumped. His lungs worked. Though it hurt to breathe too deeply. Something else inside him then. As if something had _clawed_ through him, ripping. But he could move his legs without pain. He could flex the fingers on the hand trapped beneath his bodyweight. Ignoring the other hand still clenched around the crystal, he seemed — physically, perhaps absurdly — fine. 

So he wasn't dead. It — worked? 

The — alley? — where he landed was dim. Buildings stretched above him, shadowing everything. Smog and exhaust fumes gathered like clouds, twisted about like flowing skirts in a dance around the waists of the high rises. He couldn't see the sky. 

City noise — traffic, advertisements, news reports — chattered in the background. He doubted he was alone, but the alley appeared vacant. He didn't hear or see anyone nearby. No one seemed to have noticed him. Not down here at this level. 

He thought it very likely then that he was still on Coruscant. Not that Lord Vader had explained where they were going when they left Mustafar. 

Lord Vader had not explained very much at all. At least not freely. Every piece of information 2224 ever won had been a fight.

Their first real conversation — not taunts, not instructions; but questions allowed asked and answered — had been only after he managed to disarm Lord Vader for the sixth time. Burnt through his armour, the stench of melted plastisteel and his own cooked flesh making him gag, his organic leg too wobbly from exhaustion to bear weight — and yet it was 2224 who had finally stumbled to his feet to stand. He was the one to fetch the lightsaber from where it had rolled. Kept hold of it even as it made his entire arm ache and spasm. Lord Vader had stayed prone on the ground, the rasping breath behind his mask still eerily even. 

The conversation had not happened immediately. Lord Vader had punished him, of course, for his victory. Lord Vader often had tantrums like that. When it was clear 2224 had done as desired but doing so still angered Lord Vader. As though he couldn't help it. As though he hated that 2224 had to be made strong and capable at all to accomplish what Lord Vader wanted from him. 

It was after that. After 2224 had been released from the medbay. After his body had been returned to acceptable parameters of functionality. Only then, for reasons 2224 still did not know, had Lord Vader revealed the existence of the crystal. Allowed 2224 to know his place in Lord Vader's larger plans. Fully embraced what 2224 had been created for.

 _Follow orders. Kill Jedi. Defend the Empire._

It was during that first conversation, and the others that followed, that 2224 quickly learned that Lord Vader was not someone who bothered much with details. He had no patience for specifics in strategy or comprehensive battle plans. Lord Vader valued action, and after that, the Force. But 2224 knew the advantages of such things. 2224 — liked them. Perhaps. Enjoyed creating them. Taking disparate details and forming them into a new design, an effective solution, a map of actions. It was satisfying. And he had been made to withstand pain. 

Eventually Lord Vader indulged his requests. Or 2224 had worn through his impatience and his punishments until they reduced to capitulation. Lord Vader had called him _stubborn_ then. But if possible, in that one moment, he had sounded something like fond.

Lord Vader went then and gathered what intelligence still existed from hidden, underground sources. Or, more likely, wrote down his own recollections for 2224 to read. Though 2224 knew better than to voice this assumption aloud. It had simply made sense. Those reports had been different from the others. More detailed. More personal, in a way. There were fewer names but more descriptions of each subject's personality. At times, there was paragraph after paragraph: long screeds about the uselessness and pointlessness of the war. The failure of the Republic. The crimes of the Jedi. 

2224 studied and memorised and sought more information when the gaps suggested a mitigatable risk. Sometimes Lord Vader even deigned to answer his questions. Sometimes 2224 went back to his cell early and read his reports with blood on his teeth and bruises around his neck and jaw.

And sometimes Lord Vader talked about the crystal and his intent for it. He did not seem to know if the plan was even viable. He did not seem to care. 

The crystal hadn't been tried before; 2224 learned that much early. Lord Vader thought he could control it — or power it? Something to do with the Force, and 2224 was not entitled to speak of that old religion. From what he could parse from Lord Vader's declarations — from past cryptic statements, from the training, from the hours and hours he poured over scant hints in the illegal briefing materials — the crystal could create a doorway. It could grant a single roundtrip to its passengers. 

It would cleave through time. Or if it rejected its wielder — it would cleave through his body, his mind. Divide every cell, every atom, and shatter him. 

That was too risky for Lord Vader to test on himself. The Emperor, 2224 suspected, did not know. Had not sanctioned this experiment. But 2224 was perfect for such a mission. He was created to obey, to fight. To die, if necessary. He would be no loss to the Empire, especially if his suspicions were true and the Empire was unaware of his continued existence. 

Before Coruscant, there had only been Mustafar. There had been only the training hall and the medbay and his little sleeping cell in the fortress. He spoke to no one. He saw no one else. There was a chance he would doubt that he existed at all, that he was not just another ghost that haunted Mustafar, if it had not been for the med droids, for the pain when he could no longer ignore it, and for Lord Vader. 

There had once been other things. The reports made that clear. Things that had come before. Thirty-some years of things. Experiences. _People._

Others who had shared his face. He would have called them brothers. A man who had loved him. According to the reports. A man he was loyal to, the same and yet different from how 2224 was loyal to Lord Vader. A man who then betrayed him along with everything else. 

His memories were damaged. They blurred and twisted when he tried to remember — the war, other clones like him, a General he once served — until there was only heat, and the pain, the orange glow of lava reflected all around him. And a metal hand on his face. Holding him down, insensate to his kicks, his fists, the ash in the back of his throat as he screamed, _cutting_ — 

In a small secret faraway place in his mind, 2224 thought sometimes. He considered. He tried to picture it. In the silent spaces between real and unreal when he woke uncertain from dreams that had left him sweating and shivering. He stared at the stone wall of his sleeping cell and wondered what it must have been like. Brothers. Love. Betrayal. A name that once belonged to him. What did it mean? What did that _feel_ like?

His memories were damaged. It made no matter. He had his intel. He had his orders. 

This was likely still Coruscant. If the crystal had worked as expected, 2224 was twenty-two years in the past, in the middle of the Clone Wars. The crystal had done the first half of its job. 2224 now had his own mission objective to complete. 

Lord Vader's orders had been straightforward. Only two directives. 

"Find Obi-Wan Kenobi. Bring him to me. _Alive_." 


End file.
